Interviewing an author is not as straight forward as you might think. Often they are coming in from out of town for 24 hours or less and have a fairly tight schedule while they are here.

Sometimes the authors have been affected by the congestion and general purpose ickiness that is Atlanta traffic.

Sometimes the schedule is plagued by the questionable info on the various mapping websites that often will lead them to some place other than our office.

And sometimes they arrive at the right place and the right time and for some unknown reason the recording equipment will decide not to work.

Alas – on the scheduled date of my interview with Jasper Fforde, it was the airline that got in the way. We were supposed to meet at noon that day. He was to come to straight to our offices after getting off a flight from Miami. But the plane broke. Okay – I’m sure it was more technical than that, and probably less dramatic, but you get the idea. Our poor author had to spend something like 4 hours on the tarmac while the plane fixers did their thing.

And even after all that Jasper was gracious enough to meet with me at his hotel in the 30 minutes he ended up having before his 7PM book signing event. So I reshuffled my day, packed up my equipment and headed down to the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead. It was worth it.

Shades of Grey is a fascinating read – and as you’ll see in the interview one that I had trouble classifying. Is it Sci-Fi? Is it social commentary? Is it just good fiction? I think yes, yes and yes. Oh and if you love a good British accent like I do, you won’t want to miss today’s podcast.

Enjoy the interview, and click here to check out the rest of the great authors talking about their books on our podcast!